Our game-gods imposed a curious kind of metaversal democracy on us yesterday, in their accidental wisdom, creating a ginormous entity called “Concierge Party Group” inworld with 6,926 members.

Wait. Make that 6,727. Because the chat in this absolutely outsized Second Life Tier Nation drove at least 199 people instantly absolutely batty and they bailed.

MJ Linden put up a dirt-simple group charter: “Do not spam the group.” That never works on socializers in Second Life, however; one resident’s pithy sayings are another resident’s spam.

Blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight of a code-dictated mass movement, Concierge Party Group members immediately came to a very stark realization: the Lindens had violated Nature in two basic ways that they said could Never Be Done.

The first thing they did was make this the 26th group. 26th! How can you have 26 groups!!! In every office hour, on every JIRA comment, at every real-life meet up in the back of the bar, the Lindens have told us that we can never never never ever never ever ever ever never have more than 25 groups. Because. It would be too many calls to the data base. Yet…here they made one at the drop of a party hat.

The next thing they did was mass-invite people into this group — no, mass join them into the group so that upon log-on, they showed as as already members, without having to fumble with the wonky interface. Wow! Some land barons were saying, “Hey, I want that. How did they do that?” One button — instant mass audience or customer mailing list.

Something tells me the Lindens didn’t have to pay $100 to make this group, either.

But there was more…

It didn’t take the first member of Concierge Party Nation long to figure out that the voting tools worked! MJ Linden, unlike many controlling and fussy rape role-players and land barons who make groups, hadn’t figured out how to turn off the voting tool for the “everyone category” and just leave it for the officers.

And with good reason. As anyone with an inworld group of more than 1 person, let along 750, can tell you, what inevitably happens is that even with screening, some nit will post a vote, rather than a message (it used to be that was the only way to leave messages in the group), or they will put up a retarded referendum like “Did I fart?” which will have that exact effect even in a non-olfactorious world, because it forces numerous hapless group members, upon log-in, to have to bat away a drop-down blue-menu voting screen.

Proposition 1 of this new democracy, however wasn’t a spam, but a very urgent civic issue:

“I propose that we don’t get auto-invited”

A good deal of discussion went up about the sense of invasion people felt, being frog-marched into a group by Linden-run switches — and of course you couldn’t leave this roach motel because you had to have the group tag on to gain entrance to the party island on Saturday. That meant 4-5 long days of chat in a group with…well, it was down to 6,724 now, but let’s say there’s a LOT of chat in this group!

Proposition 2 wasn’t long in coming:

“Shut the fuck up.”

Proposition 1, having been found wanting by some expert JIRAhdists, soon morphed into Proposition 3:

“I propose that auto acception never be implemented.”

This bright new democrat had figured out REAL fast the sheer horrorifying implications of mass groupedness, and had thought of not only staying the Lindens’ hands this once, with a censorious sense of congress about their action. No, global action had to be contemplated. The prospect of any prim diva being able to put all her shoppers or club-goers into a force-group…any mall-going mangina able to bind every single avatar within her 96 m2 radar range into a group…or what if the Librarians on Info Island decided to group everybody who ever clicked on a kiosk…it made ad-farms seem like a mere stroll on the beach in a drug haze of draw distance at 64…

Contemplating the possibilities of talking with 6,926 people that first night, before 199 fled in knock-kneed horror, willing to ditch the prospect of partying hearty with the Lindens, I put up Propositions 3 and 4:

“Should Linden Lab open-source its server code?” and

“Should tier-paying residents have a collective seat on the board of Linden Lab”?

Well, democracy means a lot of spade-work. It’s the sort of thing of thing that Clay Shirkey, with his Here Comes Everybody sort of mobbing and wise-crowding, isn’t thinking about too much because he figure it will all be Our Gang.

“What does ‘open source’ mean?” asked one Concierge Party-goer, unaware of how his $125 “investment” could be going down the toilet someday. “What is server code?” asked another.

“Yes, paying tier is like paying tax, so yeah, no taxation without representation,” somebody concluded.

“No, it’s not.” “Yes, it is.” “No, it’s not.”

Then…20 minutes of RodneyKing Voom pleading for us to all go along. A group of 6,926 people is always a good place to join hands and sing “We Are the World,” somebody suggested.

Feeling a little bit like Scoble going from Facebook to Plaxo, I was wondering by this time if I could pass any inventory to 6,926 of my new friends. Turns out –nope.

In fact, a group this outrageously huge, well, it just doesn’t load. It took 10 minutes for my props to clear the Submitting….hang. Just trying to see who was on line (I was hoping to get a nice gander into the real log-on statistics with a sample this big!) was impossible, it would only show blanks, or 100 at a time.

One of the interesting statistics you could see in this group were numbers nobody ever thinks much about:

43 Linden Partiers6,926 Concierge Partiers

And you wonder why they never seem to pass any h’ordeuvres in this joint, let alone get your sim up and running!

In case you thought some or many of these now 6,744 people might use this group to organize, oh, around texture theft or the woefully-inadequate new ad-farm policy or even to turn out votes for Obama, think again.

Tier Nation is busy deciding where they’ll find a toga to wear to the Lindens’ imposed-theme party. I have a feeling the Gor silk stalks are going to be doing a land-office business this week and even the Caliphate-imposing Al-Andalus sim might get their tier payed if they play their cards right.

27 Responses to “Tier Nation: The 26th Group”

Bob

Mar 14th, 2008

I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over how much BAWWWWWWWWW you’re emitting.

...

Mar 14th, 2008

There needs to be an option for only group officers to be able to initiate a group chat.

Ex Prototype

Mar 14th, 2008

Seriously Prokofy, just shut up. All you ever do is complain about something, your toxic. Your wall of text posts whining about this or that have become very very old.

Brady

Mar 14th, 2008

Hey you are back and posting! Thats great! There was a rumoring going around you’d quit SL due to a serious illness. Wonderful to see you posting again!

bleh

Mar 14th, 2008

Honestly, as much as I complain about Proks attitude and posts, it’s a DAMN SIGHT BETTER than the horrible bullshit that’s passed as “articles” in the last few weeks.

This Leninist is glad to see Prok back.

Alyx Stoklitsky

Mar 14th, 2008

“The first thing they did was make this the 26th group. 26th! How can you have 26 groups!!! In every office hour, on every JIRA comment, at every real-life meet up in the back of the bar, the Lindens have told us that we can never never never ever never ever ever ever never have more than 25 groups. Because. It would be too many calls to the data base. Yet…here they made one at the drop of a party hat.”

Oh prokofy. They gave a short-term 26th group to a select under 7000 residents. This HARDLY compares to the resources required to give a 26th group to the the millions residents, or even all the premium residents, however many of them they are.

I’m not big on defending the Lindens, comments like this are just baseless.

So you were auto-added to a group. Big deal.

Still, it’s nice to see you writing on the herald again, where you don’t censor my every comment for no legitimate reason.

Ann Otoole

Mar 14th, 2008

there is no shortage of jira feature requests in respect to groups. Linden labs has universally rejected any consideration of mods to group functions until they understand how it works. (which can only mean whoever wrote it quit a long time ago).

So if you want group feature action then go search jira for the group related stuff. it isn’t hard to find. then cast your vote into the pit of customer despair where all effort is a waste of your time.

the savvy enterprising person will recognize this as an opportunity to ship functionality out of SL where real work gets done by people that know what they are doing.

Dr. Internet

Mar 14th, 2008

Wow, what a stupid thing to bitch about.

Of course it’s possible to have more than 26 groups, however, people would want on the magnitude of 50 groups, span that to over several thousand residents, it tolls up.

then people would bitch about a 50 group limit too. Especially people like you who cry about everything.

Do us all a favor and kill yourself.

Poison yourself like in the good ‘ol russian way of doing things.
Bleach is the new cyanide, bottoms up you useless excuse for a human being.

hello, prok. how you been? i liked this article about the massive abduction into group. i find it appalling that people want to be part of some “in-crowd” or inner linden circle thing so much they will tolerate any condition to get to think they are. i was in an instructors group for linden labs as i gave periodic classes for a time, and the spam and stupid comments became so bad i quit it.
the last time i spoke with a linden i got so angry i could not finish what i had to say since i just wanted to scream and pull hair and gouge eyes.
im better now.

Cai Pirinha

Mar 14th, 2008

Prokofy, could you let us know the relevant point of your article? I couldn’t really find it. Thanks.

Pie Psaltery

Mar 14th, 2008

The thing I find interesting about this article (did I really say that???) is that in a world with nearly 13 million registered accounts of which about a half million logged in last week, only slightly less then 7000 people are actually paying to be in the “in crowd”.

(Looks back at previous posts, reads comments where some idiot said “I’d just settle for a 26th group slot to handle this one.”)

Weird, man. Weird.

Maybe I should leave wishes for other things in the comments on this site?

marilyn murphy

Mar 14th, 2008

hi, pie!!

Artemis Fate

Mar 14th, 2008

Welcome back to the Herald Prokofy, I’d say it’s a surprise, but we pretty much all called it the moment you started crying about being mistreated and never coming back because of the Pixeleen Conspiracy. Or is this one of those “matters of dire national emergency”? Because I could honestly care less if they create another temporary group slot for their Concierge party.

I’ll be waiting in shock for the one article that would surprise me from you: “I have nothing to bitch about, and no one is out to get me” by Prokofy Neva.

As usually, it’s just pitched too high over the heads of most readers here, but those that think about things conceptually will get it, and even if there is only 2 of them, that’s fine.

And duh, I realize that when the Lindens are making a temporary work group of 6,926 people for one purpose, which won’t have land, granulated roles, and content pushed in it, it’s nothing compared to what it would mean to provide that for, say, 100,000 premium customers, which is what they have for mainland ownership, and geez, 500,000 island owners? I have no idea how many island numbers. We don’t have those figures. Obviously, as someone who runs 12 land groups with hundreds of customers in Second Life, unlike Alyk Stoklitsky, who is just a bum, I do understand a little bit about data bases and groups.

But there is much that can be learned when you turn off the automatic stupid tekkie ijjit snark. For example: that there are only 6,926 the Lindens could force-group and force-join who pay more than $125 for a mainland sim or island. First, they said they were only going to join those with LESS than 25 groups. Yet…they joined those with MORE, like me, making 26. So…where’s everybody else?

Yeah, 6,926 people in a gigantic group…but…that is…cat spit compared to what is supposed to be holding up this railroad.

I hate having to explain everything like this all the time.

Prokofy Neva

Mar 14th, 2008

You know what, Artemis? Why don’t you just go off and fuck yourself. What purpose would you say you serve by posting your stupid little trite pieces of shit here? No-one likes you, myself included. Just go off and die.

Razrcut Brooks

Mar 14th, 2008

While not a friend of Prok I do appreciate her writing ability and am glad to see an article from her on here. Those above that complain because they think Prok bitches too much must not be familiar with her. Check out her other blogs. She comments on a wide range of issues and balances the critical ones with the complimentary. My only issue with her is the elitist personality that infiltrates some articles. She seems like people I know in RL that are “conversation dominators” who despise the simple art of listening.

Nonetheless, her writing ability is sharp and entertaining so I hope to see more.

Angel

Mar 14th, 2008

Good article Prok. I laughed at the thought of chaos.

Artemis Fate

Mar 14th, 2008

“I hate having to explain everything like this all the time.”

Don’t worry, you’re not alone, I’m sure there are lots of other people as confounded and frustrated as you are when they’re similarly trying to convey to their Doctors why Aliens are out to get them via their cybernetic cow-agents from Mars, in all those mental asylums across the world. I’m sure they’d like you back.

Concord Comet

Mar 14th, 2008

Why don’t you write about LL potential IPO? Will you be buying any LL stock?

DinkyHockerShootsSmack!

Mar 15th, 2008

“Just go off and die.”

ZOMFGWTF!1!11!???

porkfritter wished harm – real life HARM to someones!

CRIME!

Artemis! You should write huge screeds, on several different blogs, about the atrocious and criminal immorality of such REAL LIFE HARM statements, and how it’s damaging back the metaverse(s). Make sure to somehow connect it to the Soviets.

In other news, I saw pork’n'stein shedding fake crocodile tears over on her blog about Phillip’s departure. I noticed how porkfritter says she get email responces from Philly Dawg. ZOMG FIC!

I like Artemis.

Cai Pirinha

Mar 15th, 2008

“I hate having to explain everything like this all the time.”

If you wrote better arcticles you wouldn’t need to.

So, the real surprise is that there are only about 7,000 concierge level members? Why? There are about 13,000 islands and 3,000 mainland sims in SL. So there can theoretically be only a maximum of 13,000+5,800=18,800 people holding more than 1/2 of a sim.

Since a number of people are owning more than 1 island or more than 32,768 sqm of mainland, 7,000 concierge members sounds like a number you would expect.

Syrani Nakajima

Mar 16th, 2008

Actually, you didn’t have wear your tag to TP in to the party. I got in with my, I don’t know, “I have a green tentacle arm” group activated. But I do suppose you had to stay in the group until liftoff … Anyway, I got the group spam all week and it was nothing as interesting or ground-shaking as you’ve reported. Mostly “Where is the party????” and “But I don’t have a toga, wahhh.” And then LL clamped the chat shut in seconds pretty much each time. It was amusing.

Hexx Triskaidekaphobia

Mar 17th, 2008

Wow, Prok. You sure got a lot of money in the bank!

Alyx Stoklitsky

Mar 17th, 2008

“We don’t have those figures. Obviously, as someone who runs 12 land groups with hundreds of customers in Second Life, unlike Alyk Stoklitsky, who is just a bum, I do understand a little bit about data bases and groups.”

This is truely hilarious given the nature of my RL qualifications and work history in database management and systems maintenance.

The fact that I don’t feel the need to own land doesn’t make me a ‘bum’, Prokofy. It just means I have the common sense not to invest real cash in something that doesn’t exist.